WRITING TOPIC — 3 QUESTIONS

A few weeks ago, I watched an interview on Bill Moyers Journal and was mesmerized by the work of Anna Deavere Smith. It is tough work. She takes on controversial subjects most would not touch in our sanitized, politically correct language of the day. Her 1992 one-woman performance Fires in the Mirror explored the violence between Jews and Blacks after an August 1991 civic disturbance in the New York neighborhood of Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Her solo performance in Twilight: Los Angeles dramatized the 1992 riots that broke out in L.A. following the first Rodney King trial.

For her current one-woman play Let Me Down Easy, Anna Deavere Smith interviewed Americans from all walks of life about healthcare, medical, and end of life issues. After 9 years and 300 plus interviews, she chose 20 people; through their words, body language and speech, she transforms on stage into each one. I’ve only seen snippets of her 90 minute performance on TV. And from bullrider to politician to Buddhist monk, I could hear the voice of all America inserted into the healthcare debate, leaving little room for doubt — something has to change.

We are trying to bring disparate worlds together, not so that we can all get along, but so we can see out of the ‘me’ into ‘us.’

The title Let Me Down Easy came to her almost out of a dream. There are two songs with the name. Of the title, James H. Cone of the Union Theological Seminary said they are the words of a broken heart and can be interpreted as broken love. “Don’t do it harshly. Not too mean. Let it be easy.”

Let Me Down Easy is a call about grace and kindness in a world that lacks that often — in a winner take all world.

Death is the ultimate form of loss, the ultimate form of abandonment

It broke her heart to know that we, with all of our money and technology, believe that we can afford to leave people so alone

Are we afraid of being poor, afraid of losing, afraid of being sick? Is that why we distance ourselves from that reality all around us?

She chose these 20 particular people because they are very connected to the life cycle – death and life

The most important thing you can do is be with someone when they die

Art comes in when the official language falls apart. When things fall apart, you can see more and you can even be part of indicating new ways that things can be put together.

What seems to be important to Anna Deavere Smith is the art of listening. And letting what she hears soak into each cell of her body. Words matter. People matter. She believes something she learned from her grandfather (who was also the inspiration for her method of theater) — if you say a word often enough, it becomes you. In a New York Times article Through 1 Woman, 20 Views of Life’s End she says, “I try to embody America by embodying its words.”

Near the end of the interview, Bill Moyers asked, “When did you begin to listen to people so acutely?” Anna said when she was young, she lived next to a woman who weighed 400 pounds. The neighbor would ask her to go to the store to buy her fatback and she’d love to sit on her porch and listen to her stories — that’s when she started really listening.

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Writing Topic — 3 Questions

How do we teach ourselves to listen? How do we get people to talk about what has meaning for them, moving beyond repetition or sound bites? In Anna’s words, “I say their words over and over. I listen and I wear the words.”

She said she also taught herself to listen by breaking up certain rhythmic speech patterns. She met a linguist at a cocktail party in 1979 who said she would give her 3 questions that were guaranteed to break the patterns and change the way people are expressing themselves:

Have you ever come close to death?

Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do?

Do you know the circumstances of your birth?

And that’s the inspiration for this Writing Topic — 3 Questions.

Choose one of the 3 questions above. Write it down at the top of your paper. Take out a fast writing pen and do a timed 15 minute Writing Practice.

Maybe 3 questions, combined with the wild mind of Writing Practice, will break patterns in our writing and lead us to listen more closely to our own voices.

In November, the Moth Storytelling Awards in New York honored her as their 2009 recipient at the Annual Moth Ball. The Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy covered the event which was also attended by writer Garrison Keillor. On the subject of healthcare, the blog references a compelling verbal account from Keillor that night about his stroke in September. He had the stroke while on a massage table, eventually drove himself to the ER, and waited 15 minutes in line before he was able to tell anyone he was having a stroke. Read the full story at Speakeasy: Jonathan Ames, Garrison Keillor and Anna Deavere Smith Headline Annual Moth Ball.

In some ways the most effective politicians are the ones who have the best verbal clothes that they manipulate the best way. And there is a gap between that type of clothing and where people walk and where people live.

Whitman was doing another kind of work for the country at that time. Speaking a different song. And I think the politicians can sing to us but I respect, in a way, the limitation of their language. I mean I guess it’s a part of our culture that goes back as far as Jefferson, that they have to be so careful about what they say. My only desire would then be that we would find other places in our culture to work out our differences.

32 Responses

You know what, QM? This post & writing topic could not have come at a better time for me. I look forward to writing about a few questions I have had on my mind lately. This morning at 5am mt Uncle Francis lost his battle with cancer. He has been suffering for months. This leaves my Dad as the only remaining sibling in his family. I want so much to write about this, & will, but now I have to make the drive back home for yet another funeral. Though, I am relieved that the suffering is now over, I have so many questions to deal with. I’ll write when I get back. Writing helps in so many ways. D

QM, what a courageous person! I didn’t want to comment on this until I had a chance to watch the Bill Moyers interview with Anna Deavere Smith, so I had to wait until this evening to comment. Remarkable woman. I am so impressed.

I hope Let Me Down Easy goes out on the road. I would love to see this. Just watching the snippets during the interview was something else. Her facial expressions and gestures, the way she moved her mouth, and her voice–it was an amazing transformation as she went into each character.

The part where she talked about the three questions–that was so interesting, and unfortunately Bill Moyers followed her commentary on the three questions with a language of politics question. I so wanted to hear more about why those questions cause a person to vary their speech, break out of whatever mold they might be in.

But I guess that’s what we might find out as we write on these three questions.

This post is outstanding with all the links. I listened to her interview with Bill Moyers and she made such an impression. sloWalker did an excellent job of summarizing the interview. I now plan on getting her book.

yb, I hope she takes this piece on the road. Or, maybe we should take a trip to NYC to see it in person.

I went to the library today and checked out “Letter to a Young Artist” by Anne and reading through the day, off and on, I finished it. A lovely book full of things that made me sit on benches and rocks as I walked and contemplate how they applied in my life.

I have fallen in love with this woman and what she has to say. I can’t say enough good things about the impact this post and the links had on me.

Why am I the only one commenting on this tremendous post? Oh, well, I guess that shows what an impact it’s had on me. I have started to re-read “Letters to a Young Artist.” I found two more of her books at the public libraries within walking distance of my house. I’ll pick them up this afternoon. I’ve ordered the “Twilight” movie about the aftermath of the Rodney King beating and a movie about Hawaii’s last queen overthrown by Americans to protect the growing sugar cane business.

LOL, Bob. You’re not alone. I never knew about Anna Deavere Smith until this post, and she blew me away, too. I don’t watch TV, so even though she looked familiar from the different series that she’s been in, I hadn’t ever seen her on TV.

But something about the one-person play–that alone is to be admired. Could you imagine, getting up there on the huge stage, all those people out in the audience. And then that she would become these characters, all real people. I mean, she’s reflecting back to them their mannerisms and what they say. It reminded me of memoir, where you’re putting out there your truth about yourself and others. Maybe what you’re putting out there doesn’t reflect others in a great light, but you’re still putting it out there.

I noticed she told Bill Moyers that she and the cowboy were great friends. I was glad to hear that, to know that the real man could sit in the audience and see Anna portray him, and then on top of it all, they had forged a friendship. Wow.

I haven’t had a chance to dig into this as much as you have. I’m swamped at work, so I only was able to watch the interview. But I plan to dig in.

I also know that QM has had a very hard first couple of days this week, lots of work. She got sick last night, else she would have commented, I’m sure.

The copy of her book I picked up at the library contains a picture of the bull rider/cowboy. It was interesting to see what he looked like and to think about them being friends. Brent Williams, the bull rider, looks very young and very cowboyish with a big smile

Sorry to hear about QM being sick. She’s been working very hard with overtime and all.

About the one-person play, I have always wanted to do one. I admire people who can go on stage day after day and say the same things over and over again. I don’t think I could do more than one performance, but who knows?

diddy, really sorry to hear about your Uncle Francis. Are you back from traveling home? It sure has been a hard year for you, one of many losses. Sending lots of good energy your way. Your comment fits right in with the work of Anna Deavere Smith.

Bob, I’ve been sick this week and thus am late weighing back in on this post. But I am ecstatic that you fell in love with Anna Deavere Smith! I was blown away when I saw her on Bill Moyers. That was my first exposure to her art. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. The courage she has. How she takes all that time to research and do the interviews. How she has learned to really listen to other people.

I hope you’ll come back and let us know how the movie Twilight is. It made me want to see it, too. She’s got a lot of teaching materials out there, too, about her work. It would be a good way to educate others on some of these issues.

Bob, I really appreciate your comments. I never take people’s comments for granted. It makes my day when I do a post that resonates with someone strongly. Or can turn at least one other person on to a great artist or writer. Maybe she’ll take the show on the road and we can go see her play!

ybonesy, the way Anna Deavere Smith is able to capture people’s mannerisms and speech patterns is astounding. I think it’s because she really listens. What I like about her work is that it’s not slamming other people or throwing negativity around — she is actually using the words of Americans she has interviewed to get her points across. She’s listening, interviewing, quoting people word for word and letting others make their own decisions about how they feel from the art she does.

I loved the three questions, too, and how she was taught that by a linguist. The part about the speech patterns was amazing. I know Bill Moyers led her in another direction on the language piece but I found that fascinating, too.

How politicians speak another language than artists. And it’s a canned and contained language. No matter how much they think they can bust out of it before they get elected, once they are in office, it’s business as usual. Politics.

Artists are on the other end of the spectrum. The language is totally different. Yet there are political artists. I think that’s why I added the quote at the end, about finding other ways to work out our differences besides politics which can be bitter and vile at times. Art is another way to approach what is difficult. To give people another way in to issues we might not agree on. She does say in the top quote, the point is not to agree — but to have compassion for those whose ideas or life experiences might be different than your own.

QM, the post on Anna Deavere Smith lit a fire under my behind. I read “Letters to a Young Artist” in one afternoon. I am re-reading it. I have “Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines” and the book of the play about the riots involving African-Americans and Hassidic Jews in NY.

The video was superb. I have the DVD’s of all of her performance pieces on DVD coming to me.

That post certainly spoke to me. I know that you were sick. I kept wondering why people weren’t commenting on the post which was so inspiring to me. Guess different things inspire different people. I felt so alone in my wonder and joy (but I did know that you weren’t feeling well).

What a wonderful gift to me for the holidays. Thank you from the bottom of my heart

Bob, thanks so much for your kind comment. I feel the same way. She is an inspiration in so many ways. And it seems like Anna Deavere Smith hit a chord with ybonesy, too. She’s got so much courage and goes after issues that really matter in ways that people seem to be able to hear them.

You are not alone in your wonder and joy! It’s always hard to predict why some posts are commented on and others are not. ybonesy and I stopped trying to figure that out a long time ago! But one thing I do know, if even one person is inspired to comment on a post I write, that’s enough for me.

Hey, Bob, in the near future, ybonesy and I are going to be doing our Writing Practices on the 3 questions in this Writing Topic inspired by Anna Deavere Smith. Do you want to join us in doing a practice on one or all of these 3 questions?

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QM & yb, I’m in for the three questions. Just let me know when you want me to write on the three questions. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and do them this weekend and send them to you both when I finish all three.

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I am still in process of reading Anna Deavere Smith’s book, Talk to Me: Reading Between the Lines. I have yet to begin the script of the play/performance piece, Fires in the Mirror. I’m into the second reading of Letters to a Young Artist. I can’t thank you all enough for opening up this woman’s world to me.

The film I wanted was a video and I don’t have a VCR anymore. I’ll look for it on NetFlix.

All of this makes me want to see her performance in NYC. Maybe I will surprise myself and go.

Bob, thanks for checking in on your viewing and reading of Anna Deavere Smith’s body of work. I’m looking forward to your insights. Remember how Natalie always talked about how important it is to read a writer’s or artist’s whole body of work?

When I get excited about an artist or writer, I tend to want to dive into their work for a period of time, too. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been around either. When I discover a writer or artist, it’s like they just released their books or art anew.

I did that with James Baldwin when I first starting reading him and loving his work. Also with Alice Walker, John Williams and Stoner. And I was inspired by Patricia Hampl in the same way, though I haven’t read all of her books yet.

I have also read all of Natalie Goldberg’s books, before, during, and after studying with her. Sometimes I like to go back and I get inspired all over again. To go back and read a person that has inspired is like a practice, revisiting an anchor or a structure that reminds us to keep going.

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Anna Deavere Smith’s latest production, Let Me Down Easy aired on THIRTEEN’s Great Performances Friday, January 13 at 9 p.m. on PBS. I hope to see this piece about the healthcare debate told through the voices of 19 Americans, including her aunt.

“Even in the darkest hour, even where the crisis is the greatest, you’ll often find people who have the gift of grace, the gift of kindness, the gift of healing,” Smith observed. “Ultimately, through this play I am trying to spark a conversation that is easier, and maybe more enjoyable to have through art and entertainment than through politics.” -Anna Deavere Smith